4.3 Dark Knight Feedback

[Chrono_Rising]

4.3 brought great changes to the dark knight defensive kit as well as some quality of life adjustments. These changes improved the defensive capabilities of the class, and maintained the fast paced playstyle that draws me to the class. However, I feel there are still some improvements which could be made to further adjust Dark Knight into feeling amazing in terms of gameplay.

Mana Pool - Currently we hold 9480 MP at max level. For some reason this has been set to be just shy of 4 dark arts. Being able to hold onto 9600 MP (or even 10800 MP for flexibility) would allow dark knights to pool up to 4 dark arts worth of mana for a burst phase.

Sole Survivor - Overall I love the new skill effect, but I would like to see further adjustment to this skill. When the timer expires I would like to see this skill grant 2400+ mana and 50 blood (50 blood is a new effect but is currently on the PVP version of the skill) rather than 1896 MP and 0 blood. I think the HP restore is perfect.

Blood Weapon - In its current form Blood Weapon is primarily a haste and blood effect. I’ve gone into detail on this in other posts, but it works out that the mana gained from blood weapon is approximately the same amount of mana gained from staying in grit and using Syphon Strike over the duration of 40 seconds, and you should expect to gain about 39 blood from each use of blood weapon. If Blood Weapon is meant to be a haste and blood benefit I would like to see these attributes buffed, specifically a 20% haste and buffing the blood gained per hit to 4 would feel far more impactful for the class than its current incarnation. This gives 1 extra GCD in blood weapon (instead of 1 every two uses) and a total of 1 bloodspiller worth of blood.

Blood Price - I would still like to see this skill unlocked from grit.

Delirium - Trait Delirium to buff the duration of blood weapon and blood price naturally without cost.

Souleater - Souleater healing out of grit would just feel right.

This is just my feedback for 4.3 changes, and hope for future directions. What does everyone else think?

[Lyth]

Stance Restrictions
I think that stance restrictions should be removed from DRK. The Grit MP reduction to 1200 MP this patch suggests that the devs are fairly cautious about allowing us freedom to change stances. This is fine, but this should also be reflected in our job design. Leave the conditional stance abilities for jobs that have the freedom to change stances on oGCD, with no attached resource cost.

Take PLD, for example. Changing stance is costly. As a result, there are no stance restricted abilities or effects. You don't lose access to passive blocking when you're not in Shield Oath. You don't lose access to Fight or Flight outside of Sword Oath. This is very sensible. It should be applied to DRK's design.

Souleater should heal outside of Grit. It doesn't matter if it's a smaller heal, or if it only occurs as a Dark Arts effect, but it should be there. If you can have healing on Storm's Path irrespective of stance, you can certainly find a way to have it on Souleater.

I understand the caution around Blood Price's resource generation. At this point, though, I'd rather see the ability removed and applied as a trait on Shadow Wall. The longer recast on the effect would allow it to be tuned to have more single target value, and it'd add a bit of personality to Shadow Wall.

Blood Weapon is another ability that shouldn't be really be stance-dependent. You can use FoF, Req, and IR in whatever stance you like.

Burst
I do think that DRK suffers as far as burst is concerned. Most burst windows increase your output over fewer GCDs. This is what you want. It means that you get more powered-up hits out under raid buffs. It also gives you an edge in lower uptime fights, because your buffs are up for a higher proportion of the 'active' fight.

DRK's approach to burst is to push out damage for longer. Blood Weapon allows you to support more DA usage, but doesn't make DA stronger. Delirium extends Blood Weapon without adding any extra impact to each hit.

While the thought of making Blood Weapon faster sounds appealing, I think you'll run into a problem with clipping. The new Plunge animation lock is nice, for example, but there's probably an upper bound on how fast you can make it. If people are running into clipping issues at a 10% speed boost, it's only going to get worse at higher speeds.

I think if you wanted to make DRK thematically faster than it is, you'd need something along the lines of a Duality type effect, where your Dark Arts empowered effect hits for a second time.

I think Blood Weapon itself is fine, but the bigger weakness is Delirium. The issue is a relatively underwhelming effect and a high cost. What I'd like to see is something along the lines of this:

Blood Weapon: Increase recast to 60s, increase duration to 20s.

Delirium: Replaces Blood Weapon at Lv. 62. Whenever Dark Arts is used under the effect of Delirium, the Dark Arts effect is applied for a second time (à la Duality).

We need to push out potency in a shorter span of time, rather than spreading it out.

Other issues
I think Sole Survivor is fantastic as it is. The resource gain is nice, but the really interesting part is the timed heal. I do think that having it cleanse Walking Dead would be a nice addition. At the very least, I do want to see some sort of a UI change to Living Dead that shows the amount of healing still required.

The other issue that springs to mind is that Dark Passenger is still just shy of being dps neutral in single target because of Slashing, but I personally think the solution to this is to keep it as it is for now, and just get rid of those awful 100% uptime buffs (Slashing/Piercing) in the next expansion.

[Reynhart]

Blood Weapon allows you to support more DA usage, but doesn't make DA stronger. Delirium extends Blood Weapon without adding any extra impact to each hit.

Blood Weapon allow for more DA usage in a specific window, that's how DRK burst. With 100 Blood and having already used Hard Slash, you could set your window up for 4 DA on 4 consecutive GCD, and up to two DA on oGCDs, which requires more than 12000 MP.

[Satarn]

I think Sole Survivor is fantastic as it is. The resource gain is nice, but the really interesting part is the timed heal.

The only thing I'd change about new SS is shortening the duration to 10 seconds. I understand the 15 seconds were there to give some leeway when it still required the target KO, but I think it could be reduced now that we always get something out of it. Still, it was a very nice change.

I do think that having it cleanse Walking Dead would be a nice addition.

SS being a 120 seconds cd would completely remove the downside of Living Dead, given you choose to save it for it. I believe it essentially reducing the healing requirement to 80% is good enough. That said, LD could maybe use a QoL change of being removed when encounter ends. Not for raiding, just to make it a bit more usable in dungeons and solo.

At the very least, I do want to see some sort of a UI change to Living Dead that shows the amount of healing still required.

An easy way to solve this issue would be changing Walking Dead's "can't be killed" effect to an actual damage invulnerability. It would be a slight buff, but you'd still have to get down to 1hp and heal through all of it. Main perk would be that your hp bar would give healers a clear indicator of how much healing is still required and thus help utilizing the skill better without using Benediction.

The other issue that springs to mind is that Dark Passenger is still just shy of being dps neutral in single target because of Slashing, but I personally think the solution to this is to keep it as it is for now, and just get rid of those awful 100% uptime buffs (Slashing/Piercing) in the next expansion.

While I agree slashing/piercing debuffs should be removed at some point, we could at least get DP changed to slashing damage for now.

[Hierro]

I think Dark Passenger in its current form is 100% perfect.

We may look at the lost 14/28 potency lost, but it's smart. If buffed it to 150, that would still make it ever-so-slightly inferior to DA, and we'd still be in the question of buffing it further. Buffed further, and it would simply be either neutral, or ever-so-slightly ahead of our 2-second recast DA. Imagine the cries and whining about what a pointless buff it was to DP.

But instead, what we have here is a choice presented by the devs. We can sacrifice the miniscule 14/28 potency once on a 60 second timer for single target fights, and in exchange we gain some sizable amount of aggro, should the need arise. Or we can choose to DA, and no harm no foul. It's perfect! We shouldn't be asking for a DA clone with a prettier animation, we should be asking for choices, and that's exactly what we have. We don't have another skill to worry about keeping on cooldown in order to optimize. We have a tool to use when we NEED it.

And then when you think of the very realistic scenario where you have to pick up adds as DRK, DADP is a solid choice because if you're the first one to jump on an add, it most likely lacks slashing debuff. In such a likely case, DADP offers no hard feelings, and that's good design in my book.

[shao32]

i belive blood weapon and blood price need a change and being unlock it from grit, like keep blood weapon at it is and turn blood price as a parry-bloodbath skill removing the blood-mp generation, of course remove the self healing from soul-eater and add it to blood price, it will solve most fluff mitigation problems from DRK.

we still need a sinergy with living dead in a way to be able to recover ourself from walking dead, sole survivor is perfect for that task.

dark passenger is nice but saddly is not 100% perfect thanks to slashing but i hope next expansion SE get rid from those silly buffs that dont offer nothing.

for the rest DRK need potency increse across the board or changes on they mechanics to be on par on terms of dps with they lower utility, i hope SE dont buff that in this patch bcs they are still working on it.

[aqskerorokero]

Meh, Paladin has no ability to bypass the downside of tank stance, while war has unchained and drk has darkside, that should be considered why pld has no skill locked behind a stance.....

[Reynhart]

drk has darkside

Darkside does not bypass anything since you would have it even without Grit so you still lose 20% of your damage.
However, PLD is the only job that build its gauge differently based on its stance.

[TouchandFeel]

Mana Pool

Agreed. In addition to this, they really need to do some general "clean up" and re-tuning of some of the MP costs for abilities as there are some with MP costs that I don't feel quite make sense with the shift towards 2400 MP being sort of the "measuring stick" for MP on DRK, for example 1320 MP for Abyssal Drain just seems odd now and should really just be changed to 1200 MP or 1/2 a DA.

Sole Survivor

I agree about the Blood gain. I also would love it if there was a way to activate the 20% effect early, essentially giving up the chance of getting the 30% if the target dies but gaining more control over when the 20% heal happens.

Blood Weapon

I agree that the Blood gain from Blood Weapon really needs a boost, the resource gain (MP/Blood) on Blood Weapon is pretty lackluster and the "haste" effect could definitely use a bit more impact.

Blood Price

This one I disagree with. I feel that Blood Price should stay Grit locked and be the "defensive" alternative to the "offensive" Blood Weapon. The problem that I have with Blood Price is that it is lacking, both in resource gain and in something to give it that more defensive bent. I think that they should add a refresh effect that restores a set amount of MP over it's duration in addition to the MP received on being hit. As for the defensive aspect, something like a +20% to parry like Dark Dance had would be nice.

Delirium

I also disagree with this one and agree more with Lyth, wherein Delirium is mostly okay as is but definitely needs something more. First I would smooth out the duration increases to +10s for Blood Weapon and +15s for Blood Price. In addition, and something that I believe Lyth was alluding to, I would add the effect where the potency increase from DA is buffed (140-->180 single target / 50-->70 aoe?) for a shortish duration (10s?).

Soul Eater

Agreed. This is a no-brainer and I am surprised it still has not happened because it needs to.

In addition to that I feel there some other things, many I have mentioned elsewhere in other threads, that still need to be addressed, such as:
- Adding the potency boost for AoE abilities to DA-AD.
- Doing something to Unleash so that it remains a desired and useful ability alongside Abyssal Drain.
- Doing something with Living Dead so that it isn't so cumbersome like improving the non-existent messaging as well as making heal check less punishing. Also just scrapping it and coming up with something else is still a viable solution imo.
- Getting rid of the separate Grit/No Grit potencies for Bloodspiller and just making the Blood Gauge abilities (Bloodspiller and Quietus) just simply ignore the Grit damage penalty.
- Adding additional effects to the DA effects of GCD abilities, such as additional Blood gain from DA Soul Eater, to add some level of differentiation so that you have more of a strategic choice when deciding what ability to DA. The blanket +140 potency is pretty boring and makes DA usage less engaging which has helped foment a feeling of DA usage being "spammy".

[Chrono_Rising]

I also disagree with this one and agree more with Lyth, wherein Delirium is mostly okay as is but definitely needs something more. First I would smooth out the duration increases to +10s for Blood Weapon and +15s for Blood Price. In addition, and something that I believe Lyth was alluding to, I would add the effect where the potency increase from DA is buffed (140-->180 single target / 50-->70 aoe?) for a shortish duration (10s?).

I think at 40 potency this is close to breaking even with current delirium as well as being a potential nerf if not paired with oGCDs like carve and spit. Current delirium is a net of nearly 335 potency per use currently, so at 40 potency you would need to use 9 dark arts in a span of 10 seconds which I don't think is possible.

However, what I could get behind as a buff to delirium is something like this:
Boost dark arts potency on skills by 100%. Additional effect: Dark Arts fades only on use of a GCD action. Duration: 8 seconds. Cooldown 60 seconds.

This would give dark arts the ability to span across multiple actions while also boosting the dark arts potency for a net gain, which would also make things like Dark passenger a situational gain on single targets (you still might want to keep it for adds since it would be worth more on multiple targets), to meet current delirium you would need to use 3 dark arts to break even and any additional oGCD thrown in during those dark arts would be a net positive.